Wednesday, December 12, 2012

Understanding Saddam’s Information Minister “Baghdad Bob”

During the 2003 invasion of Iraq, the West was both shocked
and amused by the announcements made by Iraq’s Information Minister Mohammed
Saeed al-Sahaf, better known as “Baghdad Bob.” He repeatedly claimed that the
Americans and British were being thrashed, and that Iraq was winning the war. These
comments were incomprehensible in the West as their news was reporting a quick
and deadly thrust by the U.S. led Coalition, which reached Baghdad in only a
matter of weeks. In fact, Minister Sahaf’s pronouncements reflected what Saddam
Hussein’s government was actually hearing from its military and officials. This
was due to the environment the Iraqi dictator created based upon Iraq’s
history, and his conspiratorial mind.

Saddam's Information Minister al-Sahaf became known as "Baghdad Bob" during the 2003 invasion (Wikipedia)

Information Minister Mohammed Saeed al-Sahaf made a name for
himself internationally by his unbelievable quotes he gave to the media during
the invasion of Iraq. When U.S. troops were on the outskirts of Baghdad he told the press, “They are not any place. They are on the move everywhere. They are a
snake moving in the desert. They hold no place in Iraq. This is an illusion.” On April 3, when the Americans reached the Baghdad airport, he said,
“We butchered the force present at the airport. We have retaken the airport!
There are no Americans there!” Two days later, when U.S. forces were in the
center of the capital, the Minister told the press, “They are not near Baghdad.
Don’t believe them. … They said they entered with … tanks in the middle of the
capital. … This speech is too far from reality. It is a part of this sickness
of their plan. There is no … existence to the American troops … in Baghdad at
all.” On April 6, he claimed, “Whenever we attack, they retreat. When we pound
them with missiles and heavy artillery, they retreat even deeper. But when we
stopped pounding, they pushed to the airport for propaganda purposes.” It
seemed like the Minister was living in some fantasy world, but in fact, his
public pronouncements reflected what the Iraqi regime actually thought was
happening during the war.

The state of fear that Saddam Hussein imposed on Iraq
created a distorted picture of the 2003
invasion. This started with Saddam’s mistrust of his military. Given the history
of coups in the nation, Iraq’s leader was always weary of another happening.
The Baath party for example, had seized power in May 1963, only to be kicked
out by a countercoup in November. During the 1990s, there were also several
attempts to unseat Saddam, one involving the Republican Guard, the elite
military unit in the country. This caused the Iraqi dictator to create a series
of parallel military and paramilitary forces, such as the Special Republican
Guard and the Saddam Fedayeen, each meant to keep the other in check. He also routinely
carried out purges of the officer corps. As Deputy Prime Minister Tariq Aziz
noted, “If a military leader disappeared one did not ask to know what happened,
since it was known that the security services had dealt with the unfortunate
individual.” Given this culture, officers were afraid to speak the truth to
Saddam out of fear that they might anger him, and be killed as a result. This
happened within the government bureaucracy and the Baath Party as well. The
result was when the U.S. led Coalition invaded Iraq on March 19, 2003, the
leadership received rosy news from the battlefield. Soldiers, local officials,
and the Baath Party offices all reported fierce fighting with the Americans.
When the rare negative memo was received it was dismissed. That’s why on March
30, when U.S. forces were in Najaf, Saddam believed that the war was a
stalemate. That same day, his secretary told the Iraqi Foreign Ministry to
relay to France and Russia that it would only accept an unconditional
withdrawal by the Coalition from the country. The picture that Information
Minister Sahaf was painting therefore was a reflection of what the government
was hearing from its underlings not the ranting of a government apparatchik
desperately trying to spin a positive story in the face of defeat. Almost to
the end, Baghdad believed that it was actually winning the war.

Saddam on Iraqi TV, April 2003. Right up to the end of the war Saddam actually believed that Iraq was winning, because of the false reports his underlings were sending him out of fear of telling him the truth (Reuters)

Minister Sahaf seemed like a joke every time he appeared on
TV proclaiming that the U.S. led Coalition was losing. He became something of a
celebrity as a result, and there are websites to this day that archive his
statements, and make fun of them. What was not known then was that Saddam
Hussein actually believed that his forces were beating the Americans. When the U.S.
and England invaded, all Baghdad heard was that waves of fearless Iraqis were not
only holding their own against the Coalition, but pushing them into the desert.
When Minister Sahaf said there were no U.S. forces in the capital, most in the
government actually believed that. This was a result of the bubble that Saddam
created around himself. The fear of being overthrown caused him to undermine
his own military, and instill a reign of terror throughout the government in an
attempt to defeat any plots that might be hatched against him. In turn, bearing
bad news was not allowed out of fear of death. Saddam thus became a victim of
his own survival tactics, and Minister Sahaf provided a look into this world
more than anyone knew at the time.

No comments:

TWITTER

About Me

Musings On Iraq was started in 2008 to explain the political, economic, security and cultural situation in Iraq via original articles and interviews. I have written for the Jamestown Foundation, Tom Ricks’ Best Defense at Foreign Policy and the Daily Beast, and was responsible for a chapter in the book Volatile Landscape: Iraq And Its Insurgent Movements. My work has been published in Iraq via AK News, Al-Mada, Sotaliraq, All Iraq News, and Ur News, and I have been interviewed by Rudaw English. I was interviewed on CCTV and TRT World News TV, and have appeared in CNN, the Christian Science Monitor, The National, Columbia Journalism Review, Mother Jones, PBS’ Frontline, the Center for Strategic and International Studies, the Institute for the Study of War, Radio Free Iraq, and others. I have also been cited in Iraq From war To A New Authoritarianism by Toby Dodge, Imagining the Nation Nationalism, Sectarianism and Socio-Political Conflict in Iraq by Harith al-Qarawee, ISIS Inside the Army of Terror by Michael Weiss and Hassan Hassahn, The Rise of the Islamic State by Patrick Cocburn, and others. If you wish to contact me personally my email is: motown67@aol.com